Human skeleton from the Bronze-Age tombs in Benxi City, Liaoning Province
Wei Haibo, Zhang Zhenbiao
1989, 8(04):
320-328、395.
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The human skeletons were excavated from Bronze-Age Tombs in Miao-Ho -Shan of Ben-xi City, Liaoning Province. The cranial materials (including 4 males and 2 females) are preserved at Benxi Museum.
The paper described the morphological features of Benxi crania in some details and discussed the problems concerned with the racial relationship between the Benxi crania and other modern crania of the neighboring populations in North Asia.
The characteristics of the crania are as follows: The vault is ellipsoid to ovoid in norma verticalis. The Chignon can be. found at the rear part of two crania. The cranial form is long and wide but high. The vault sutures are uncomplicated in the structure. The lambdoid ossicle occurred on one cranium. The coronal ossicles on both lateral sides of coronal suture appeared on one of the crania. The transition between the lower margin of zygomatic process of the maxilla and the inferior margin of zygomatic bone is rough in all of the crania.
In norma frontalis, the superciliary arch is more developed than the glabella, but the middle portion of the superciliary arch is stout and turns suddenly became of a very low relief at the lateral sides. This structure is very like those of Omisaki crania in Hokkaido (Ishida, 1988).The facial part is very wide (145.3 mm) and not high (72.3 mm). The horizontal contour of the nasal bone is low and flat (the simotic index is 29.71). The piliform aperture is not high but oderate wide. The inferior piliform margin belongs to the type of fossa prenasalis in most of the crania. The shape of orbital is low and wide. It is of interest to note that the infraorbital suture is observed in Benxi crania, many of which reach into the infraorbital foramen. This structure appeared in Omisalki crania (Ishida, 1988).
The cluster analysis of the standardized Euclidcan's distance depends on 9 items of the cranial measurements based on the male individual. The results are shown in Fig. 1.
This figure clearly shows that Benxi, Omisaki, Sakhalin Ainu, Tongus and Eskimo groups form one cluster separated from all of modern Chinese crania in different regions. It might be indicated that the characteristics of Benxi crania are more like that of Omisaki, Tongus, Sakhalin Ainu and Eskimo than that of the modern craina from different regions in China. With regard to the relationship between the Benxi group and 4 groups as mentioned above, the Benxi group has a close resemblance to Omisaki group in the cranial measurements. This is especially so for the cranial length, the cranial breadth, the cranial height, the bizygomatic breadth and the upper facial height. Besides, the Benxi crania also have extremely flat faces as that of Omisaki group (Ishida, 1988).
From the cluster analysis and the comparative analysis, the present authors believe that the ancestor of the groups living in Siberia region and Okhotsk Seacoast must have come from the North Chinese people about 20000 years ago as Turner ll proposed in 1986. As for the cranial affinities between Benxi group. and Omisaki group, Hajime (1988) believed that the Omisaki amd Moyoro are the same racial group (the Okhotsk group), as the cranial measurements concerned, they have a close resemblance to the Nanays and Ulchs living in the low basin of Heilongjiang River. In this regard, we quite agree with his opinion. But, we prefer to believe that the Nanays and Ulchs rise from the ancient inhabitant lived in North China and may be from Bronze-Age population represented by Benxi group in North-Eastern China. This fact related to the migration of the ancient Chinese population. We inferred that the ancient Chinese populations of the North-Eastern in Bronze-Age wene to low basin of Heilongjiang River through Heilongjiang region and continued t0 move northward along the eastern coast of Siberia. Some of them crossed to Omisaki region through Sakhalin and became the modern Omisaki group. Thus, it stands to reason that Benxi group must be the direct ancestor of Omisaki group living in Hokkaido.
